What if we told you that there are little buttons you can click on that would make your life immediately easier, boost your productivity and help you save a lot of time? Guess what, these magic buttons exist and they are called Chrome extensions.
You probably use, or at least have heard about Chrome, the revolutionary Internet browser by Google. It offers much more than a convenient and sleek way to access the Web. When you check out the Chrome Web Store, you quickly realize that there are TONS of extensions, most of them available for free, with all kinds of purposes and functionalities. Some of these extensions improve your browser’s performance, others can assist when you create a website, and many are simply there to uplift your mood with games, video or music.
No matter what lifehack you’re searching for, you can probably find it as a Chrome extension. Since the selection is so great, we’re happy to offer you another time-saving service with this curated list of 30 excellent extensions. These are the best Chrome extensions out there, and once you start playing around with them you will understand why. (P.S., many of these exist for other browsers as well!)
Great utilities
If your browser looks like a train wreck with so many tabs open that you can no longer tell which is which, you need OneTab, and you need it now. This brilliant extension converts your tab-overload into a neat list, allowing you to restore them at any point. It puts an end to tab-hoarding while making sure nothing is lost. You’ll be amazed how beautiful your browser looks when it’s not crowded with unreadable tab titles.
The days when people used the same silly password for every single login are thankfully over. But how do you handle all those unique and complicated passwords? LastPass is your security protection extension. It saves all of your passwords in one place, auto-filling the login fields whenever you access recognized websites. It also generates random passwords that no one will be able to guess, and it keeps your logins safe and sound.
Your browser is like a your apartment. It needs the occasional sweeping and cleaning. With Click and Clean, all of the annoying tasks involved in browser data cleaning become faster, easier and more effective. This isn’t just a matter of tidying up info that your browser stores like your cache, saved passwords and previous searchers. It has important implications for functionality and for security. The Click and Clean extension is specifically designed to both help boost your browser’s functionality and speed, and to protect it from online troublemakers.
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows users to access a private network no matter where they are located or network they are physically connected to. It’s a terrific solution for remote access (say, if you are working away from your employer’s Intranet connection), for using local browsing of various locations (for instance, if you are surfing in the UK but want to access the web as if you were in the US), and for protecting your Internet browsing with smart encryption. SurfEasy provides all these and other services directly from your browser.
Bookmarks are a genius invention, but accessing them can be really frustrating – so many clicks through so many sub-menus to get to the address you’re looking for. This is exactly what the Bookmarks Sidebar extension is here to fix. One little click to the left of your screen, and your full bookmarks list is right there. With robust customization options, you can also organize and manage your lists at your own convenience.
Chrome extensions for bloggers
Every blogger needs an assistant, but most bloggers can’t afford one. Luckily, Evernote Web Clipper is a great substitute. Instead of saving bookmarked links, the Web Clipper saves the content of the page that is relevant for you. It lets you clip it and copy it to your Evernote board, allowing you to add comments, tags and highlights. These clippings are extremely helpful when you’re preparing and researching your next post, and you can also use them as visuals.
Even the most experienced bloggers encounter grammar glitches here and there. While that’s only human, it’s not ideal for your online publication and can even hurt your professional image as an authority in your field. By adding the Grammarly extension to your browser, you basically invite an editor to go over your texts and make sure they are error-free. The only difference is that the extension won’t judge you afterwards ;)
Don’t let language barriers stand between your blog and the content of the World Wide Web. Expand your sources of information to include texts in any foreign language. With ImTranslator you can receive quality translations of full web pages, relevant paragraph or single words.
What’s that word you’re looking for? It kind of has the same meaning is that other word, but also extends to other stuff, right? Thesaurus – Bloggers wouldn’t survive without it. While there are many great thesaurus services available online, they require you to visit their website, load words and navigate between different options. As an extension, Power Thesaurus is available to you directly from the tab you’re currently working on, and this will save you loads of precious writing time.
Today is the day you will defeat all online distractions, sit down in front of your screen and write that blog post. No, it’s not your impressive discipline that will make that happen. It’s the StayFocused extension, which will forcefully shut you off of all the time-wasting websites that keep you from fulfilling your goals. You can decide for yourself which websites are blocked and for how long, whether you’re allowed short Facebook breaks or whether you are going all in. The goal is to get work done, and StayFocused will be there to keep you on track.
Chrome extensions for designers
Loom is a tool that designers in the online video age would absolutely love. This extension simplifies video screen recording for many purposes – webinars, how-tos, reviews and more. Designers can use it both to present their own work to clients, as well as for creating videos for their clients’ online presence. Loom doesn’t just capture clips. It offers post-production editing options, and generous storage so that you can manage a library of your videos.
Regular people use google to search for words. Designers search for images. Whenever you need to trace the appearances of an image or find its original creator, Google Search by Image will canvass the Web and show you all available results. This is a tremendously helpful tool for making sure you’re on the right side of copyright laws. You can also use it to discover artists and expand your sources for visual inspiration.
The ideal color reader tool, Color Zilla, lets you discover all info of the shades and tones directly from your browser. It’s a super convenient tool for designers to quickly and accurately analyze colors of individuals pixels. Once you have the required info, you can copy it to another software and immediately integrate it into your designs. Color Zilla also offers advanced tools, like a gradient generator and a color palette analysis for full web pages.
In design, more than in any other field, the devil is in the details. A close look is needed to make important decisions when you work. But when you browse through tons of images, clicking on each and every one of them to increase their size can be extremely time consuming. That’s where HoverZoom comes in, giving you an expanded version of thumbnails and previews with a simple mouse hover. You get a pop-up version of the image that is true to the original size and quality without loading new pages all the time.
Similar to Color Zilla, this extension also implements smart reading functions, only it does so to analyze font. It works with a simple mouse hover over any text you see online. WhatFont will immediately display the font type, its family and its full properties, including size, style and even color. Add this neat extension to your browser and you will never need to play “guess the font” game ever again.
Chrome extensions for small biz owners
Do you want to see an increase in your website’s traffic? The answer is in SEO. SEO Quake will help you get to your search engine goals by analyzing your website’s content and meta data. This awesome extension will generate detailed reports for individual pages in your website, reviewing both basic metrics (title, description) and advanced ones (keyword density, link-building). Use it together with the Wix SEO Wizto achieve a comprehensive optimization of your website.
If you’re not already familiar with Hootsuite, it is one of the leading social marketing tools available today. The Hootsuite Hootlet extension is basically a browser-based shortcut for many of the great feature that are offered by the full Hootsuite dashboard. This includes searching for relevant keywords throughout various social networks, posting content to multiple social channels directly through the browser widget and scheduling social posts based on neat content that you find online.
Emailing is a huge part of any small biz owners workday. It can be distracting when you try to focus on specific tasks and still need to constantly check your inbox and be reminded of important emails to send out. The Right Inbox (Gmail based) offers a fantastic solution for streamlining the email process while allowing you to continue to multitask. It lets you schedule emails you compose on the spot but want to send out later, creating recurring emails to avoid the repetitive action, and to send yourself reminders and notes to arrive at specific time points.
Long, incomprehensible URLs are a nightmare. They are both aesthetically off-putting (who wants a never ending line of weird characters on their business card?) and completely impractical. Bitly, a wonderful URL shortening tool, is a lifesaver in this regard. It takes long web addresses and shortens them into something easier to share. Bitly’s browser extension saves you the trouble of going over to their homepage each time you need to shorten a link. Simply use the extension and it will generate a shortened version right on the spot.
Email marketing is one of the most effective methods of keeping your audience engaged and expanding your clientele. But in order for your email campaigns to work, you need actual subscribers. List Goal is an extension that helps you prioritize your subscribers list by setting growth goals and keeping track of the path to reach them. With a smart dashboard, it monitors your various emails’ performance and detects both the progress and the obstacles you’re facing.
Preparing for a video call with potential clients in Japan? Working on a deadline set for the time zone in Brazil? Freelance life is a transnational experience. While the world is getting more and more connected, time differences are still very real and they are hard to keep track of. FoxClocks is a foxy extension that helps you keep not one, but multiple time zones. You can choose to display clocks permanently on your status bar, or reveal them with just one click.
Dozens of millions of people all over the world are using Google Calendar as their main calendar. It’s a fantastic tool that needs no introduction. But did you know that you can simplify the Calendar viewing with this browser extension? Instead of reaching for your phone to open the Calendar app, or clicking through various links in your Gmail inbox, this extension gives you a neat little button that reveals your daily affairs with a simple click, right where you are.
An effective note-taking system is one of the key items in the freelancer’s survival kit. Sticky Notes has taken note-taking to the next level. Clicking the extension button from your browser reveals the various notes you wrote for yourself and you can edit the text. You can control the size of the note popping up, as well as customize fonts, text size and colors. It’s like having a magic sticky note stuck to your computer screen that you can make visible and invisible whenever you want!
Don’t get bogged down by complicated invoicing procedures for your projects. Use Invoice Quick, a browser-based invoicing tool, to generate and track invoices for your clients. The Chrome extension offers a dashboard for creating detailed invoices and emails them to your clients. You can then integrate your PayPal account to receive your money directly through the invoice. The documents are designed for professional use, with a sleek look and intuitive layout. You can even add your own logo too!
Video demonstrations are an excellent method for communicating information, often used by freelancers to present progress to clients or when creating instructional videos. To prepare great video demos, we recommend you check out the Screen and Webcam Recorder extension. It has a simple interface that provides you with all the features you need to create excellent, high-quality videos. With unlimited storage, you can record as many videos as you want, with no expiration date – all stored and available for future use.
Just awesome
After a hard day at work, you deserve a treat! Online shopping is a guilty pleasure, but you can reduce the guilt aspect by finding great deals and coupon codes. In other words, you need Honey. This nifty extension automatically searches for available discount codes for the website you are currently browsing. Add Honey to your browser and you’ll never miss a deal and never pay more than necessary.
When you want to combine business and pleasure, use the Sideplayer extensions to play YouTube videos on the side of your web browser. No need to switch between tabs or browsers – you can just watch and multitask at the same time. It’s also pretty useful when you create a website with Wix and want to watch our how-to videos ;)
Ugh, why don’t computer manufacturers add an emoji keyboard already?! Once we got used to having them so available on our phones, there’s nothing more annoying than having to search for them online and awkwardly copy/paste them into emails, blog posts, etc. But there’s a solution! The Emoji Keyboard extension opens a magic world of emojis, available directly on your browser with a simple click of a button!
GIF addicts, this one’s for you. Add Giphy’s extension to your browser and have the world’s largest GIF library at your service. On the extension pop-up, you can search Giphy’s collection based on keywords, and then drag and drop your selected GIF straight to the platform you’re writing on. You can also grab the link and copy/paste it wherever you want.
What if we told you that you can take Netflix and give it a power boost? That’s pretty much what Super Netflix is about. This extension does all kinds of wonders to your Netflix experience, including adjusting the player for brightness and contrast, hiding episode description to avoid even minimal spoilers, uploading your own subtitle files and even increasing the movie speed! It’s a binge-watching must-have extension that will tighten your friendship with Netflix even more.
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Brought to you by Jessica Grajeda Designs & the Wix Blog.
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